BurgerTime: World TourReview

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By Mitch Dyer

Here's the thing about HD remakes: If all they plan to do is prey on our nostalgia, they will not live up to our expectations. Memory and reality are rarely the same thing when it comes to games, as design changes so rapidly. To really knock a remake out of the park, developers need to change what doesn't work without sacrificing the core of what's bringing us back in the first place. BurgerTime: World Tour only sort of accomplishes this.

For those too young to know what World Tour is reduxing, brace yourselves; this is the nonsense games were made of way back when. BurgerTime was an 80s arcade classic wherein a chef climbed ladders, avoided anthropomorphic protein foods, and walked over giant hamburger components to make sandwiches. Walking over a suspended ingredient (tomato, beef, etc.) knocks it down a level in the vertically tiered stages. Dropping a bun onto cheese causes the bottom ingredient to drop down, too. World Tour doesn't change this formula at all. You get limited lives, a bunch of burgers to stomp on, and plenty of evil eggs to avoid.

Surprising nobody, walking on top of lettuce isn't exciting like it was 30 years ago. The puzzle platformer genre has since evolved, and World Tour makes a half-hearted effort to keep up with what's improved. The latest, hottest addition is jumping. Hopping about adds a faster pace to the once methodical movement. Now we can leap over oncoming threats rather than clumsily walk around them. Power-ups give you the odd bonus, too, but even they're unexciting. Speed boosts let me zip through obstacles unharmed, and rocket-jumps aided in launching to higher heights. I could also stun enemies with pepper and take 'em out with a spatula.

It's all standard stuff, and it works well within the confines of BurgerTime, but none of it is used in an interesting or unexpected way. Speed boosts appear where they're needed in one stage and don't exist in the next. Same goes for the rockets. These are the only differentiating factors between each stage, really. There isn't anything particularly strategic or puzzle-like about the walkways and ladders making up most levels -- upon they all blur together. The most memorable things about World Tour, actually, were its frustrating parts.

One-hit kills are annoying. At times, I died simply because I was near -- not touching -- enemies. Other times they'd spawn on and kill me, or my pepper didn't stun them like it should have. If this stuff didn't happen so frequently, I'd attribute my many deaths to being bad at a game getting on my nerves. No, my ugly, moustachioed chef died for reasons out of my hands.

The tedium of building burgers set in early for me, too. At a base level, the arcade remake plays as well as, and at times a bit better than the original. It satisfies a surface-level urge to interact with a game. It does what BurgerTime has always done well, now with additional traps providing much needed but typical variables to obstruct your progress. After a few decades, though, this kind of game is just sterile.

Die deep into a big map? Deal with it. It's back to the start for you.

I could only assemble 30 or more pieces of a sandwich for so long before daydreaming about playing something else for a while. At the same time, completing one or two stages, each only lasting a few minutes, wasn't fulfilling at all. I never found a happy balance -- I was either bored or exhausted. No matter how you slice it, BurgerTime feels, well, as throwaway as pumping a couple quarters into a machine before moving on to another game.

The Verdict

Simplicity is its strong suit, but that doesn't benefit BurgerTime World Tour very much. It's a modernization of gaming's roots that doesn't embrace anything games have done better since. Its basics do well enough to stimulate our memories of what was once loved, but BurgerTime has passed its prime. This is a shallow and mediocre remake that won't win over many newcomers.